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Monthly Archives: February 2014

Well, I’m here for an Elimination Chamber 2014 review, and basically the show was exactly what I expected it to be. I mean, all my predictions were right, so that’s clearly a true statement. There was only one real surprise on the show, to be honest, and it came in the first match.

The first match was Big E. defending the WWE Intercontinental Championship against Jack Swagger. I say this had a surprise because this match was shockingly good. It got a lot more time than I expected it to and it had some nice spots too. Swagger got speared both into the steps and off the ring apron to the floor, like how Big E. speared Ambrose at Battleground I think it was. I was expecting more of a squash and I was pleasantly surprised by how back and forth this was. Big E. still retains as expected.

Rating: ***

The next match was the New Age Outlaws defending the WWE World Tag Team Championship against the Usos. This match was kind of boring, really – the Outlaws have really worn out their welcome. I was generally uninterested in it, and the Outlaws sadly retained so we’ll have to see even more of them.

Rating: *1/2

Titus O’Neill defeated Darren Young in a terrible match. Enough said.

Rating: DUD

Next was the main event of the show, the Shield vs. The Wyatt Family. I don’t think words can express how awesome this match was. The crowd was chanting for both the Shield and the Wyatts, and boy did the match ever deliver. It was so good that I’m basically demanding that you go and watch it right now if you have not – I don’t care if you’re broke and have no television, you find a damn way. There was so much awesome in this match that I couldn’t even begin to list off everything that happened – but I will mention Seth Rollins countering a German Suplex off the top rope by LANDING ON HIS FEET. And even though I knew the Wyatts were going to win, it was able to get me to believe (in) the shield could win. I’m still wondering what Bray did to Ambrose such that he was unable to return. And I was surprised Reigns took the pin. The Wyatts celebrate as Reigns lays down in the ring from Sister Abigail, Rollins laid out in the remains of the Spanish Announce Table (RIP Spanish Announce Table), and Ambrose was nowhere to be found.

Rating: *****

In a bonus match, A.J. defended her WWE Second Rate Women’s Championship (Notice how A.J. brought the belt back from Third and a Half Rate to Second Rate, anyone? That’s how good she is) against Cameron. Unfortunately the only real highlight of this match was A.J. mocking the Funkandactyls’ ring entrance and dance, though. (Sorry?) Cameron is just terrible. And the reffing was hilariously dumb. Tamina tried to superkick Cameron but missed and hit A.J. – at least I think it was a miss, the spot looked like it was intentional. And regardless of whether it was a miss or intentional, the ref saw it, and thus it’s a DQ. Then Cameron tries to pin A.J., and Tamina breaks up the pin, which is either a D.Q. or enough to get her thrown out. Finally she gets DQ’ed when she attacks Cameron, so A.J. retains.

Rating: *

Then, Batista and Alberto Del Rio wasted ten minutes of our time in a boring match that Batista won. Batista’s on a long road to redeeming himself and this did not help.

Rating: *

And finally, the main event was the Elimination Chamber match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship with Randy Orton defending against John Cena, Sheamus, Daniel Bryan, Christian, and Cesaro. This was a really good match that’s brought down by a lot of interference near the end. It took a little while to get going, then picked up a lot once there were at least four people in the ring and got really good. I was shocked to see how well Christian actually did in this match, and was surprised to see him even get an elimination (Sheamus). Cesaro looked like a beast in this match, too, which is what I was hoping for. Once it came down to Orton, Cena, and Bryan, the Wyatts interfered as expected to take out Cena, leaving Orton and Bryan. Of course Kane came out then too to get rid of the Wyatts, only for Bryan to attack Kane. After some back and forth with Orton, Kane comes back and attacks Bryan, and he turns into an RKO. 1.2…Kickout. Ok, once he kicked out of the RKO, the fact that Kane eventually attacks Bryan AGAIN leading to ANOTHER RKO and the pinfall is completely stupid. He overcame the interference once, he shouldn’t need to do it again.

Rating: ****

Overall, the matches that were going to be good-awesome were indeed that, and the IC Title match was pretty good, but the rest of the show was bad.

Overall Rating: ***

It’s clear that WWE doesn’t give a shit about what the fans want, and it only cares about what they want to do. And it’s pretty much irrelevant, because everyone’s going to buy the network and their merchandise and everything anyway. Anyways, since NXT is going to have a PPV like show on Thursday, I thought I’d actually review that too, so I’ll be back on Thursday night.

WWE World Tag Team Championship
(c) The New Age Outlaws (c) (Billy Gunn and Road Dogg)
VS.
The Usos
My Winners: The Usos
Probable Winners: The New Age Outlaws
Winners, and still WWE World Tag Team Champions, The New Age Outlaws

Well, it’s time to put up some quick Elimination Chamber predictions. Normally I try to wait until after the last Smackdown, but it’s just easier to get this done now – it’s basically a two match show and I’ve got Olympic hockey to watch in the mornings, so it’s best to do it earlier, when the semifinals haven’t happened yet. (That said, go whoever wins between US and Canada! I root for Blackhawks, not countries. Ideally US/Canada would’ve been the gold medal game again but unfortunately one of them will be stuck with bronze. I also have to wake up at 6 AM Sunday for the gold medal game, so having that, a birthday lunch, and a PPV the same day’s going to be GREAT, especially since I’ll have been waking up early the three days prior, and the day after I’ll have to do the same.)

That said, again, this is just a two match show. And even those matches, despite the fact that they’ll be good to awesome, are both predictable.

First, in a match that no one in the world cares about, is the stereotypical match between two former tag team partners, Darren Young and Titus O’Neill. Now, this would normally be an okay storyline. Unfortunately, WWE is doing it with a tag team that no one cared about filled with talentless people. Well, Young is okay. O’Neill is god awful and should be fired promptly. He has no wrestling talent and is terrible to listen to speak. And the seal barking thing can just stop. The only thing this match is good for is knowing that I can finally say that the Prime Time Players are no longer a thing. Titus O’Neill to win because he’s a big, talentless guy, because Vince loves his big, talentless guys.

Should I mention the pointless preshow match between the Rhodes Brothers vs. Rybaxel? Well, I mentioned it.

Batista will squash Alberto Del Rio in a boring match no one will care about.

The New Age Outlaws will defend the WWE World Tag Team Championship against the Usos, because Elimination Chamber is apparently WrestleMania. The match should be ok – I’m bored of the Outlaws now so they’re a waste of space. Put the belts on the Usos already. I don’t think it happens here though.

First, I will talk about the Elimination Chamber Match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Obviously this is going to main event, but it’s getting second fiddle because it’s not the match that everyone’s looking forward to on this show. (That’s right, an Elimination Chamber match is playing second fiddle to a normal match.) I’m just going to list off the people and give some thoughts on their chances of winning:

Sheamus: Sheamus hasn’t angered me much since his return, which is a surprise. He’s been ok. We’ll see how long it lasts. That said, he’s not going to win the chamber. In fact, when the WM30 plans were still Bryan vs. Sheamus, I had figured that Bryan would eliminate Sheamus, but Sheamus, enraged, would Brogue Kick Bryan, turning heel and costing him the match. That has since changed with all the turmoil C.M. Punk leaving has caused (assuming still it’s legit). (You see how much trouble your best person leaving did, WWE? LOL.) Now I don’t even know what Sheamus does at WM30 at all. Ryback maybe? They had a decent match on Smackdown a few weeks ago.

Cesaro: Now, I know Cesaro will not win this match, but he is the one I’m most looking forward to seeing in it this year. His defeat of Randy Orton (the champion) last week and his almost (“Should have”) win over John Cena on Monday were epic, and they’ve done more for his career probably than almost anything so far, outside of him carrying Swagger. (He’s made Swagger watchable, not even Dolph could do that. Startling realization is starling.) Granted, he didn’t beat Cena, and while I understand why he didn’t, he still kind of should have. He beats the champion but loses to Cena, so that kind of knocks him right back, whether he looked good or not. He did kind of need legitimizing, though, which is what the win over Orton did – I only say that because, outside of being extremely talented, in terms of accomplishments in WWE, he’s had one U.S. title run which almost feels like it was forever ago now.

Christian: Christian honestly seems out of place in this match. He’s just kind of there. He returned and won a match to get in, but he’s just there. He’s not going to win. He’s so filler WWE labeled him as replaceable, considering they were considering having someone take him out and taking his spot if they thought of someone better. Christian says we are going to see the “most dangerous Christian we’ve ever seen before,” which leads me to believe he’s going to come out and spew some rhetoric about how evolution doesn’t exist and how people in Arizona are now legally allowed to discriminate against gays and lesbians because not allowing them to would be discriminating against their ability to discriminate against gays and lesbians in practicing their religion.

Arizona’s a fucked up place, guys. Don’t go there, they don’t deserve to have a population.

John Cena: Is it possible that this is the first time I can say that Cena’s definitely going to lose? I think it is. So, whatever. I won’t say his chances are absolute zero, but I doubt it. The reports are saying that the Wyatts will cost him the match which was like “No Shit!!” when I read it. It’s pretty obvious that will happen.

Daniel Bryan: As much as everyone wants Daniel Bryan to win, myself included, we’re all just going to have to live with the fact that it’s not going to happen. It just isn’t. WWE is too hell bent on doing whatever the fuck it is that they want that whatever the fans actually want is irrelevant. And let’s be honest, Bryan winning the title at Elimination Chamber makes even less sense than him NOT winning the Royal Rumble. I was going to say that Kane costs him the match, but if the Wyatts are going to cost Cena, I’m not sure they’d want to run two of the same angle in the same match. It may just be the shoulder injury that Kane gave him on Raw costs him it.

Randy Orton: Orton’s going to retain the belt. I see no reason to believe otherwise. We can hope that Bryan gets thrown into the main event somehow, but it’s not going to be by winning the belt here. I think we’ll know by the end of March 3rd’s Raw in Chicago where exactly WWE is going to for for WM30, because that’s probably when they’ll need to have everything completely finalized. (March 3 would represent the same Raw from 2013 where Punk faced Cena for the #1 Contender spot at WM29 before Rock/Cena was completely set in stone.)

I say March 3rd because there’s still a little part of me that’s going to expect C.M. Punk to come out at the end after there are tons of C.M. Punk chants all damn night and it’ll all have been a work. And if and when it doesn’t, we’ll all look like idiots, but that’s ok. I think we’d know immediately too whether that would happen, because I feel like the final segment would have to have Daniel Bryan and Triple H arguing in the ring about him being in the title match or something like it – if it’s just said there will be a match, then that would answer that.

Anyways, the final match is the Shield vs. the Wyatt Family, in what will most definitely be the match of the night. In fact I wish it would main event, because this is what everyone’s buying the show for anyway. The only problem with the match is that it’s kind of obvious the Wyatts will win, but oh well. I would’ve liked it a little more if it was completely unpredictable, because as much as I love the Wyatts (#FollowTheBuzzards #WalkWithTheReapers) too, I’m still pulling for the Shield. (#BELIEVEINTHESHIELD) What would make this even better is in the beginning, it just breaks down into a DQ, then Triple H comes out and forces them to have the match in the Chamber itself, because this is the kind of thing the Elimination Chamber was built for. If ever there was a more appropriate time to have a 3 vs. 3 Chamber match from the video games, this is it. My argument for why it isn’t happening is because that would require Roman Reigns to take a pinfall, and Vince probably wouldn’t be happy with that. (As awesome as Reigns is, he’s still going to get preferential treatment over Ambrose and Rollins after they’re done, which is bullshit. Ambrose and Rollins are both superior, but because they aren’t big guys they won’t get to the top nearly as quickly.) But anyways, this match is going to be epic. This is, in fact, the proper example of WWE giving fans what they want. It’s pretty simple, actually – WWE made us want the Shield vs. Wyatts, and now they’re giving us Shield vs. Wyatts. Simple, right? The build has been great, and I can’t wait for it. In fact, I’m such a nice guy that I’ve got all of their interactions apart from the stuff in the Rumble right here on this playlist:

Anyways, that’s all for my predictions. Review as always on Sunday. A very tired one, probably.